


When All Else Is Lost

by nautilicious



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Awesome Mary Morstan, F/M, Gen, Johnlockary - Freeform, Knitting, Magical Realism, Multi, POV Mary Morstan, Polyamory, s3 fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 01:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4284915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nautilicious/pseuds/nautilicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Knitting may not, on the surface, seem relevant to engines that run the world, but at its essence, it is actually quite vital. For knitting, which can express so many emotions, most often expresses love. And when all else is lost, love is what most often stays with us.”<br/>— 	Melanie Falick</p>
            </blockquote>





	When All Else Is Lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [faerymorstan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faerymorstan/gifts).



Mary knits. It's a miserable Tuesday the month before Christmas and she's not any good at it, she never has been. Her hands, capable of mending flesh or loading a gun, have always faltered on the needles. She thinks the weight of memory makes her clumsy: the shadows slip behind her eyes while she's distracted by the stitches. She hates that. She's owned those memories, claimed them, fucking composted them. She refuses to allow them to shame her but she prefers them to stay out of her way.

Still, she knits. It's her last hope, an act of desperation, because John hasn't talked to her since she handed him the flash drive and she's hugely pregnant and crushingly alone and what choice does she have? She drops a stitch, curses, then spends five minutes picking it up.

[If you'd have told her last week that she'd be knitting she'd have laughed. "I'm not really the layette type," she would have said. Except that's not what she said. When she opened the door to find Anthea on the other side, carrying a bag from an upscale knitting shop, she hadn't said that. She didn't ask how Anthea knew (of course Anthea knows). She'd said "Is it from Himself, then? _This_?" because even though Mycroft knows (of course he knows) she couldn't believe he'd encourage it. But Anthea shook her head. Anthea knows more about Mary than Mary has forgotten about herself.]

She drops another stitch. God, she hasn't done this in such a long time, but the body remembers. It doesn't matter that the dim recollection of her grandmother has faded, that the circle of women are not there to support her work. It underlies every motion of her fingers, a knowledge older than concious thought. 

She knits for hours at a time. It becomes meditative and she welcomes the way it helps her thoughts slide past. She refuses to allow shadows into the soft, delicate thing forming between her hands.

 _Knitting is knots_ , her grandmother had said, _and knots bind._

It takes focus to weave the spell. Mary, who has waited silent and motionless for most of a day to take the perfect shot; Mary, who cracked codes while explosions shattered her comrades on either side; Mary, who spent months drawing in John Watson and then months more figuring out how to keep him; Mary can focus. She brings all of her implacable will to bear and slowly, slowly, she feels the magick forming. She imagines the babe rocked by the rhythm, the needles clicking out the heartbeat of an act of creation nearly as ambitious as the one swimming in the bowl of her pelvis.

The yarn is red, of course. All-knowing Anthea brought yarn as red as a pinprick of blood, shot through with sea blue for John's eyes and silver-speckled black for Sherlock. Mary knits, stich by stitch, and refuses to fail.

The spell usually makes a shawl, but she's adapting it for multiple connections so she keeps knitting. A blanket, she thinks. Maybe for the babe, or maybe -- and for a moment she doesn't dare hope. Then she shakes herself. Magick requires absolute conviction. No maybe. This blanket is for their bed. _Theirs_. The three of them, and then, when the child arrives, all four of her loves snuggled under red wool. It doesn't matter that neither of the men have spoken to her for months, that she and Sherlock have never kissed: she is reshaping the world one stitch at a time, binding it to the shape of her will.

* * *

She knows it's working when she recieves the invitation for Christmas dinner. She doesn't know which part has taken hold until John weaves them together with his own kind of magick, claims her anew under the shield of his name. And Sherlock: Sherlock's gift to her is yarn-red, shot through with the blue and black of death.

She thinks then that she failed. Sherlock has cut a thread, unraveled a life for Mary's sake. Her yarn, so soft and fragile, cannot possibly hold against the forces he's unleashed -- she should have known better than to try something so complex.

After, when she and John have curved into one another, tears and slick and semen intermingled, she slips from her -- _their_ bed. She sits in her chair and holds the unfinished blanket in her lap. If only she'd had more time. She runs her fingers over it, letting its warmth comfort her. It's as soft as a cloud, every stitch tingling with power and love. _Knots_ , she thinks. Hundreds of knots. Surely they will hold. 

John hasn't seen the blanket yet, and she still has the edge of it to knit: one last chance to make it come right. Gold, then. Gold for victory and sacrifice, the color of heroes. Gold to make Sherlock shine, make him desired by those powers that can can keep him on this side of the ocean. Gold for power and gold like the sun when it burns too bright for shadows. She knits in the dim room, long since past the need to see the work. She whispers, praying with fervor and great specificity, informing the universe in no uncertain terms of her will. She feels the listening hush of midnight secrets, a space in which she can shape and shift the last strands. She no longer feels desperate. She feels certain.

She binds off, snips the yarn.

* * *

On the tarmac, John shakes, clutches her hand. She has no fear. She doesn't know how, but she knows the magick clicked into place. She knows it's coming, the future she has willed into being. She knows.

* * *

The plane turns. It lands.


End file.
